Entertainment
Sweet dreams are made of this!
TV Watch with Dave O’Connell
There are many reasons we should cherish TG4 as a television channel – and fostering a love of the Irish language is only one of them.
Just as important is the fact that it provides a platform for documentary makers to air their work – work that wouldn’t get a look-in on RTÉ with its diet of UK and Aussie imported soaps – bringing them to an audience that would otherwise be denied the privilege.
And then there’s a third reason: because once in a while they throw up a documentary from some other far-flung place – often under its Fiorsceal umbrella – that brings you a story, serious or uplifting, that would never have made it into the mainstream.
Last week’s offering in the Fiorsceal slot was called Sweet Dreams, and it was a powerful and moving story based around a group of women who’d experienced the genocide in Rwanda in a variety of ways . . . and now they wanted to open an ice cream shop. There were many obstacles to overcome, most obviously the problems with guaranteed electricity in a country not amenable to storing ice cream without refrigeration.
But they’d overcome their biggest problem much earlier in this process, because these women were from both sides of the ethnic divide that exploded down the middle in 1994 when more than 800,000 Tutsis were butchered and raped by the rampaging Hutus in one of the worst atrocities the world has ever endured.
Among these women were some who lost everything – family, home and future – and others whose parents, husbands, relations had carried out this barbarism.
They came together to meet and see if they could find something to pull them from the wreckage – and that something turned out to be drumming, an art that was previously off-limits to females on the basis that the drums were deemed too heavy for them to handle.
Kiki Katese had worked for many years in theatre and drama and she was the one who decided to start Ingoma Nshya, and to open it up to women from both sides of the conflict. There was only one requirement – to leave the categories of the past at the gate.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock, will be staged by Druid Theatre at this year’s Galway International Arts Festival in what the company describes as “its most ambitious production yet”.
Details of the project were announced at a launch in Druid Theatre on Monday and at the GPO in Dublin on Tuesday.
These dramas cover the turbulent years from 1916 to the Civil War, with Druid planning to weave them “into an epic theatrical event of conflict, national identity and the human toll of war”.
Directed by the company’s Artistic Director, Garry Hynes, the three plays will be performed together in one day, “drawing parallels between an Irish past and an international present”. There will also be a limited number of single-play performances.
What’s being billed as ‘DruidO’Casey’ will begin with The Plough and the Stars. It’s the story of newly married couple, Jack and Nora Clitheroe, living in a Dublin which is on the brink of rebellion in 1916.
In The Shadow of a Gunman, Donal Davoren, Seumas Shields and Minnie Powell find themselves tragically caught up in the Irish War of Independence. Finally, in Juno and the Paycock the Boyle family see their fortunes dashed amid the trauma of the Civil War.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell
A self-titled EP from Galway-based three-piece Derek Ellard & the Future Business Model is set for release next month, and each of its five tracks are likely to contain the hallmarks of the group’s sound – a jangly, ethereal dissonance that plays out to be at once challenging and poignant in its resolution. The second single from the EP, Electricity, arrives on March 24.
Derek is a songwriter who places huge emphasis on prosody and narrative. With February’s Three Sheets to the Wind, he invoked plenty of nostalgia with stories of his childhood and his relationship with his brother. Electricity presents a love story to his wife, built around images of energy sources and a simile-heavy writing style.
“The story behind this is from whenever the last decent weather was – last summer maybe,” Derek explains.
“My lovely wife came in and she had a big red head on her from running around outside and she said, ‘I think I might be solar powered’. I wrote it down in my notebook and literally that night, me and a friend of mine were trying to write songs with just E major, trying to do the least amount of chords possible. It didn’t end up like that but it’s how it all started.
“The lyrics just kind of ran out of me – every line is a simile to do with electricity and being powered. It was a little writing exercise because I wanted to see if I could knock out a few tunes in just a couple of days to stay limber. It just flew out of me and it’s always nice when those ones happen.
“Electricity was just one of those things where I was messing around with lines and laughing away, and it was all light-hearted. Next thing you know then it was done.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A weekend of plein-air painting will take place in Kinvara in early June. The not-for-profit community arts event is being organised by members of the Kinvara Area Visual Artists (KAVA) group and will be led by experienced artists and teachers
Over the Bank Holiday weekend, participants will gather to explore the beauty and culture of the village and surrounding areas, including Thoor Ballylee and the Burren.
The tutors are Steve Browning, Geraldine Walsh, Róisín Curé and Mavis Gormally, who will provide seven full-day workshops in three different locations.
These are suitable for artists who work in oil, acrylic or watercolour. There will also be an exhibition space where participants can show work completed over the weekend. People can also engage in informal paint-outs and enjoy social activities and local attractions.
Steve Browning’s workshops in oils and acrylics will take place in Kinvara Village and the Burren. Steve, who is originally from the UK, initially worked as an art director in London and Dublin. He began painting at weekends, before becoming a fulltime artist. His work has been shown in London, at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts in Belfast. It’s in collections in the UK, USA and Ireland. He has won prizes at the Dublin Plein Air Festival and Wexford’s Art in the Open Festival and has also been a finalist in the prestigious Plein Air Magazine of America’s annual art competition for three years in a row, winning the best acrylic painting award in 2022.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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